Loowit Silent Trees IPA inspires Tacoma Tree stories
Trees in Tacoma know a thing or two because they have seen a thing or two. They have overseen the signing of treaties, heard whispered declarations of love, and even saw the 1888 construction of Point Defiance Park — we’re looking at you Mountaineer tree! Tacoma trees possess much knowledge and wisdom simply because they have been alive for a long time. In 1865, they witnessed the first Tacoman, Job Carr, live in a lean-to made of cedar bark planks while he built his log cabin that still stands today. They survived the 1949 subaerial landslide at Salmon Beach in Tacoma after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake. And all Tacoma trees became weeping willows when they heard the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption silenced many of their fellow trees. Trees gossip. An underground network of fungi, called the “mycorrhizal network,” links the trees. This network acts like a wood wide web, allowing trees to exchange nutrients, water, and information about delicious beer through their interconnected root systems. That’s what trees told Peaks & Pints when we stood close. One tree told us where to brew our next house beer. The Garry oak inside the 25-acre Oak Tree Park in South Tacoma suggested we brew our 2024-25 house IPA at Loowit Brewing and name it, Silent Trees IPA. Garry knows Loowit is the Native American name for Mount St. Helens, which means “smoking mountain”. Garry knows the eruption felled trees over 230 square miles of forest. Garry knows Loowit Brewing Head Brewer Landon Smith brews delicious beer. A magnolia tree told Garry via the tree network. Good call, Garry! It worked out well. We’re also running with your idea of asking other Tacoma trees for their life stories. Get ready, Garry, we’re coming for your story next week!
“My favorite species of tree is a magnolia tree,” says Smith, who enjoyed a magnolia tree in his backyard growing up. “it was quite large. I remember that it would bloom once a year, and each bloom would last for just over a day. Also, as a kid, the leaves just seemed fake to me because they were so large.”
Brewing in the shadow of Mount St. Helens
Smith joined Loowit Brewing as a brewer in 2016, six years after longtime friends, homebrew champions, and Vancouver residents Devon Bray and Thomas Poffenroth opened the brewery and taproom in a downtown space near the old Lucky Lager brewery. It wasn’t the first brewery in their hometown that they lovingly refer to as Beercouver. In 1856, John Muench opened one of the area’s first large commercial breweries, Vancouver Brewery. It would be the first Northwest brewing home for German immigrant — and future Portland beer godfather — Henry Weinhard. Soon, they would brew Lucky Lager downtown under a giant cursive red “L”. Vancouver’s first craft brewery, Phil Stein’s Hazel Dell Brewery, opened in 1993, followed by Larry and Ana Pratt relocating their Salmon Creek Brewery and Pub from Woodland to downtown Vancouver. A year later, McMenamins opened its brewpub on the banks of the Columbia River east of downtown. Few Portlanders ventured north to drink in Vancouver, mostly because of the blight. Portland didn’t turn a head after Mt. Tabor Brewing relocated north of the river in October 2011. A year later, Loowit and Heathen Brewery were brewing beer for Beercouverites sparking a revitalization of Clark County’s largest city.
After having been open for only 8 months, Loowit received statewide recognition for excellence in their beer Vandalia Summer Ale, which was awarded a gold medal in the fruit beer category of the inaugural Washington Beer Awards in 2013 — the only Southwest Washington brewery to receive a medal.
Bray and Poffenroth poured their investments and savings into operating their 10-barrel brewery on Columbia Street near the I-5 Bridge — 66 miles south of Mount St. Helens. They worked full-time in other jobs to get their first professional brewing gig off the ground. The initial brewery has a vibe like their homebrew experiences — unpretentious, casual garage-style setting with a neighborhood feel. In 2017, they opened their first pub restaurant on site at the brewery. Seven years later, in 2024, they launched our first satellite restaurant location, Ole’s Outpost in the Orchards area of Northwest Vancouver. Loowit became the first Vancouver brewery, since Lucky Lager brewery closed in 1985, to offer a packaged, commercially available beer.
Smith, who became the Loowit head brewer in 2020 and joined ownership in 2021, began his brewing career early.
“When I graduated from high school in 2009, I started homebrewing with my dad and some of his work buddies,” explains Smith, who mentioned one of his dad’s buddies had a sweet homebrew setup in Vancouver. “Over the next few years, I spent every other Saturday homebrewing whether it was with a group or by myself. During this time, I fell in love with the community around craft beer — every time we would brew there would be some sort of bottle share, and it was always exciting to try new beers people brought.”
He was hooked. Continued to homebrew while attending community college.
“When it finally came time to decide where I wanted to go to university, I came across the Food Science and Fermentation program at Oregon State University,” he adds. So, on my 21st birthday, I packed up my belongings and moved down to Corvallis to pursue a degree in Food Science and Fermentation with the dream of becoming a professional brewer.”
When he wasn’t studying, or homebrewing, Smith worked a few jobs in the industry — including serving in a taproom and bartending.
“During my second year I took an internship brewing at McMenamins, which then lead to a temporary part-time job brewing at McMenamins in Corvallis,” says Smith. “The following summer I took an internship at Loowit in Vancouver, which is where my family lives and where I wanted to move back to once I finished school. When I returned to Oregon State for my senior year, I worked as a lab assistant in a lab that was sequencing the genome of different strains of yeast. After finishing at Oregon State, I took a job as a brewer at Loowit brewing in 2016 as a brewer where I have been ever since.”
Smith believes Loowit is the perfect cross between nature and nerd.
“There’s the Mount St. Helen’s connection with the brewery’s Native American name, so half of our beers are branded around that, while the other half are branded around our nerdy side of D&D and whatever else tickles our fancy.”
With the addition of the Tacoma Tree Foundation to our Silent Trees IPA series, maybe Loowit Brewing will brew tree nerd beers.
Tacoma Tree Foundation
When Peaks & Pints first partnered with Tacoma Tree Foundation, of TTF, in the fall of 2019, their mission was, “… dedicated to educating, empowering, and supporting community members in neighborhood-based greening. In other words, the Tacoma organization strives for a greener, healthier, more connected Tacoma — which plants well with Peaks & Pints. Our partnership was like this year’s cooperation — five years ago we then paired our house beer, Kulshan Brewing Tree-dimensional IPA, with TTF founder Sarah Low’s favorite Tacoma trees. This year, their mission is, “… focused on educating, empowering, and supporting community greening efforts in the Greater Tacoma area, Pierce County, and the watersheds of the Puget Sound.” Growth, naturally.
Trees currently cover just 20 percent of Tacoma’s area, lower than surrounding cities. A city’s tree canopy is important because it provides a range of environmental benefits including reducing the urban heat island effect by providing shade, improving air quality by filtering pollutants, managing stormwater runoff, increasing property values, enhancing biodiversity, and contributing to overall livability by creating a more pleasant and aesthetically pleasing environment. To boost the city’s tree canopy, the TTF launched an initiative dubbed “Green Blocks” that distributes free trees to residents. The program seeks to reduce barriers to tree planting and foster stewardship among Tacoma residents. The TTF examines local conditions in each neighborhood to assess the best sites for new trees. The city has created a Tree Planting Priority Tool to map out which areas need trees most urgently. The City Council also passed an ordinance, making it easier to plant street trees in November 2023.
TTF offers the trees at no cost to residents who commit to caring for them in their critical first few years of life and plans to expand its efforts to support the trees throughout their lives.
Peaks & Pints brews Loowit Brewing Silent Trees IPA
On the morning of May 18, 1980, after a century and a quarter of quiescence, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake triggered the explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens. The volcano’s northern face collapsed, burying Spirit Lake and the headwaters of the Toutle River beneath hundreds of feet of avalanche debris. The accompanying blast sent winds of 600 mph and 400 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit sweeping across the landscape, leveling forests, vaporizing foliage, and searing soils. When the smoke and ash cleared, more than 240 square miles of forest north of the peak became silent. A fringe of standing, dead, ash-covered trees formed a “ghost forest” around the blow down, and the ground was blanketed with tephra and ash. As previously mentioned, Mount St. Helens is also known as “Loowit,” which is a Native American name for the mountain, specifically from the Klickitat tribe, and is often associated with a legend where Loowit was a beautiful maiden transformed into the mountain. We asked Loowit to brew Silent Trees IPA before we had the name, but the name came quick for obvious reasons. Paying homage to the trees around Mount St. Helens and the outdoor enthusiasts who join Peaks daily in Tacoma’s Proctor District, Silent Trees IPA is the perfect beer to toast the Loowit Trail, the challenging loop that circumnavigates Mount Saint Helens through the trees. Silent Trees IPA continues Peaks & Pints’ love affair with old school piney IPAs, this time brewed with Simcoe, Columbus and Chinook for all the pine and citrus.
We’re skipping the brewing recount in this story as it was three months ago, and the previous seven house beer stories dove deep into mash conversions and gravity measurements. Smith had his game face on as he led us through the entire brewing process, often breaking into laughter as one does when dealing with our absurdity.
In conclusion, we brewed our eighth house IPA at Loowit Brewing in downtown Vancouver, and since the brewery is named after Mount St. Helens and its eruption silenced many trees, we named the beer Silent Trees IPA and have partnered with the Tacoma Tree Foundation to tell the stories of their favorite trees.
You can hear the trees applauding in the wind.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
